The Mission of BVBC is to make baptized disciples of Jesus Christ. Three characteristics describe what we want those disciples to be: worship, love and detachment. They govern all Christian experience. The apostle focused on worship and detachment in Romans 12:1-8. In verses 9-21 he focuses on Christian love. It would be wise to take a moment to review the nature of Christian love.

We lament the overuse of this word. We dismiss it as emotional fluff. But the word and its cultural uses endure. They endure because they answer to something durable in human nature. If they fail to do justice to love, it is a failure to go far enough. We need to know its deeper possibilities.

Emil Brunner once pointed to those deeper possibilities. He said, "To love a human being means to accept his existence, as it is given to me by God, and thus to love him as he is. For only if I love him thus, that is, as this particular sinful person, do I love him. For this is what he really is. Otherwise, I love an idea - and in the last resort this means that I am merely loving myself."

The following definition introduces us to the nature of love. Christian love means intending and, where possible, for the sake of Christ, doing what is best for the other person, regardless of who the person is, regardless of what it may cost us, and regardless of what we get for our efforts. That understanding of love is not without its difficulties.

Difficulties with the Nature of Christian Love
The phrase, "regardless of who the person is" brings us face to face with the troublesome question of loving and liking. Most people would answer the question, What is love?" by saying, "Love means liking someone very much." It is clear sailing until we remember that Christ told us to love our enemies, whom by definition we do not like. We find it hard to intend and do what is best for someone whom we don't like. So, what relation does liking have to loving?

We can be friends with a person for two reasons. One, the person is likable. Second, the person is not likable but is connected to someone else that we do like. Our definition of Christian love says that we do for the sake of Christ what is best for the other person.

So, love doesn't mean to dredge up happy emotions toward someone we don't like. We like Christ. The person we don't like is connected with Christ. At least, Christ died for that person. It is out of affection for Christ that we begin to look for any good we might do for the person we do not like.

A second difficulty has to do with the phrase, "regardless of what you get for your efforts." Does that mean that personal expectations should go away and hid? No doubt, some day they will, but not yet. We seldom do something costly without expecting something in return.

Here is the acid test. Do I for the sake of Christ continue to seek what is best for the other person, when my efforts fail, or when the person does not respond in the way I had hoped? Trying to love people we don't aggravates this difficulty, but it doesn't release us from the calling to love people regardless of personal benefit to us.

Love like that "is only possible to the man who can forget himself ... whose mind is centered not upon himself, but at least upon his fellows and their needs, and at most and at best upon God and his neighbour seen through the eyes of God."

Finally, loving someone, regardless of what it may cost, is difficult to do. Such love can have huge and heroic dimensions, as in Mother Teresa. It may also leave the impression that unless the cost is high, the effort to love is not genuine. But Christian love also has dimensions that are heroic but small. In reality Christian love has to do mostly wiith putting out the dog and paying the bills and doing both before it is too late. It has to do mostly with little things, because life has to do mostly with little things.

Look at 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. Let's insert some of the apostle's own words from verses 4-7 on this chapter into them. That may communicate the down-to-earth character of Christian love. If I speak with the tonguees of men and of angels, but have not patience, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but keep a record of wrongs, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but am easily provoked, I gain nothing.

That last statement is alarming, because it means that a person can make huge and heroic sacrificies, even the ultimate sacrifice, for reasons other than love. In which case the person gains nothing. Great sacrifice does not prevent a loveless religion, even a loveless Christianity. Close relationships create a living laboratory in which to test and refine Christian love. If love does not work there, it does not work.

The default setting of the human heart that loved people the way Christ in His humility loved people would exptress itself each day as follows. "I will welcome each person who requires my attention today, as if that person has been sent to me by Jesus Christ, and to honor Christ I will seek to serve him in any way I can."

The Practice of Love in the Christian Body
Romans twelve tells us what such love looks like when practiced within the Church. Verses 9-21 merit a consisten rereading. I hope that reading them together today will spark our desire to reread them often and to learn them so well that they become second nature in our daily behavior. Let's have a look at love.

The apostle began with a theme statement in verse nine. Love must be sincere. What I said about liking and loving comes into play here. Pretending you like someone, when you don't, is a recipe for disaster. Doing for the sake of Christ what is best for someone you don't like is realistic, and it has the power to soften the hard edges of personal dislike.

Something else deeper is in play here. People can be infuriating. All human beings have a side to their personalities that irritate other people and may arouse very strong antipathy. Ultimately, each of us has to decide whether human beings deserve our ridicule or our compassion. The sincereity of our love is closely related to this fundamental decision about people. I hope each of us decides that the beautiful, infuriating creature called man deserves our compassion.

You have never met an uninteresting person. Some may be shy and cannot readily reveal their fascinating selves. Others may be bombastic, and their truly interesting qualities get buried.  Every person is a hero in search of a biographer.

If you ask me what Brandywine Valley Baptist Church is about, I would say this. It is about uncovering heroes. Connecting them with Jesus Christ, and teaching them the arts of worship, love and detachment. This ministry is about people, people, people, and it is about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It is about flawed people and a flawless Savior, who loves our flawed selves with unfailing mercy and gives us power to rise about the flaws and someday cast them off.

The rest of verse nine states another fundamental orientation of Christian love. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. There is so much good in the world. There is so much good in people. Because Christian love is shaped by the experience of Jesus Christ, we know that evil never has the last word and that God turns even the worst evil to good purpose. So, we don't think we are being Pollyanna, when we acknowledge but are willing to look past the evil we see in people and discover the good that God has placed in them.

I wonder if the nastiest people I have ever met did not suffer, because no one ever saw and praised the good their Creator fired into them. We seldom make a greater impact than when we commend someone for the goodness we find in them with no hint that we have an ulterior motive.

Verse ten takes Christian love to a new level. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Earlier, I talked about loving someone you don't like. Brotherly love is about liking. and the apostle says we are to be devoted to these Christian borhters whom we like so much. I think most Christian women are comfortable with these words. I think most Christian men don't care for them, especially the word devoted. That's dangerous emotional ground, and men seldom say it, except about their families or their work. I don't mean that men don't experience what verse ten is trying to exptress. They do. They just don't like to use those words for their experience.

I had an experience with these words thta might offer an example of their usefulness. I go to a lot of church meetings. I go to congregational meetings, board meetings, staff meetings, pastors' meetings, national meetings, denominational meetings. My experience has not been uniformly satisfying, a lot of which is my own fault. I'm not proud of that, and I'm trying to correct my mistakes.

Several weeks ago, I was sitting in a board meeting, pretty well engaged with what was going on. Out of nowhere this verse started going through my mind. "All in favor, say, 'Aye.'" "Well, before we vote, I was wondering about something." "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love."

This went on sporadically for about an hour. Then, I found myself choosing to say that at intervals, just as a reminder of what matters most in my relationship to the men I serve with on the board of deacons. After a long time of doing this, I discovered that however important was the issue under discussion and whatever I thought about it, it mattered less to me than the men who were discussing it. Honoring each man, honoring the opinion of each man became central. I could live with the vote, no matter which way it went. The dishonoring of any man around the table was unacceptable.

The Journey Outward
The next two verses really talk about our devotion to God. Verse eleven travels outward. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. I don't like zealots. They use singleness of purpose to demean anything that is outside their purpose. They use singlness of purpose to control their followers. Zealots can't relax.

Please, God, don't let that be what the apostle meant. If he meant that, I'mgoing to have to pretend I didn't hear. That kind of zeal insults the unhurried beauty of God's creation. It insults the integrity of other people. It insults God who rested on Day Seven.

The point of verse eleven is to serve the Lord, and that brings to mind the famous story from the Gospel of Luke about mary and Martha. Marth was worked up about working too hard, while Mary wasn't working at all. She was just sitting around, listening to Jesus talk. Jesus said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

The apostle meant something very different from the breathless zeal that ignores so much and offends so many. He meant, when we serve the Lord, do it with all your heart. When you worship or teach or lead a small group or serve on a committee, don't act like it is just another day at the office. Put your heart into it. Be filled with the Spirit. Turn in a stellar performance for our great audience of One!

The Journey Inward
If verse eleven travels outward, verse twelve travels inward. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. The community of the elect is to be marked by joy, patience and prayer. Think about each for a minute.

Being a community of joy doesn't mean that we fake it. It doesn't mean that if you're dying inside, you act like nothing is wrong. The apostle says, Be joyful in hope. The joy of the Church comes from its hope. Paul has already spoke about this hope in Romans 5:5. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Our hope is that at the heart of the universe there is a heart of love toward us. God loves humanity. When that takes hold of your heart, joy can operate even if in some ways you are dying inside. His love is greater than our worst problems.

Second, Paul says, Be patient in affliction. I think we make two mistakes here. One is, understandably, we want the affliction to end fast. The encouragement to be patient is a reminder that affliction accomplishes its good only by running its course.

The second mistake we make in times of affliction is to be in too big a hurry to say what the affliction means. My own limited experience suggests that it could be months and even years before we know the real meaning of our afflictions. Waiting to know requires patience.

Finally, the apostle says, Be faithful in prayer. At bottom, prayer is the most powerful way in which we acknowledge our dependence on God. The words with which we pray are secondary. I try to use the words and ideas of the Bible form my prayer. I am less likely to say something silly, if I do that. But we want to be a community of people marked by prayer, because we depend on God for our existence and fruitfulness and joy and patience.

 I am grateful for the way in which this congregation does that. Our worship here is our communal prayer. Our staff prays. Our board and committees pray. Our small groups pray. Our C.E. classes pray. Our children pray. Our teenagers pray. Many of us pray daily in our private devotions. Let's continue to be such a church, faithful to express our dependence on God.

Next Sunday, we will reflect on the rest of this intensely practical chapter. In the meantime I commend Romans twelve to you. Read it through often at a sitting. It puts the cookies on the bottom shelf, as it tells us how a transformed mind works right down in the jungle of life. Read it through at least three times by next Sunday.